


Out of Season

by ShatrisLerran



Category: Kings (TV 2009)
Genre: Angst, Drama, Gen, Translation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-01
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-03-18 11:23:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3567833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShatrisLerran/pseuds/ShatrisLerran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some entomology and strange associations</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of Season

**Author's Note:**

> The butterfly specie was meant [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_%28butterfly%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_%28butterfly%29%0A)
> 
> Thanks to [monicawoe](archiveofourown.org/users/monicawoe/) for beta-reading and corrections!

When Jack was very young, butterflies seemed magical to him. They were a miracle, a sign from heaven, they flew so high—unreachable and free. He tried to draw butterflies. His pictures were crooked and oblique, with clumsily picked colors, red gnats surrounded the figure in the center of the sheet and became his crown. 

When he was seven, he squashed a caterpillar for the first time. He was playing in the garden with Michelle. Jack stopped under a tree and suddenly felt something uncomfortable stirring in his hair. Raising his hand, he felt something both slippery and furry, squirming under his fingers. He flicked the strange creature off and then saw what it was. The shaggy colorful worm looked so disgusting that he stepped on it with his shoe, mashing the creature into the ground until he couldn't see it anymore.

"Jack, what are you doing here? Why did you crush the caterpillar, Jack?" Michelle's voice reached him, she came next to him while he was still under the tree. "Do not you know that these are butterflies?"

"Butterflies? You're lying!" He dismissed the thought as absolutely unbelievable. Magical, fine, delicate creatures and this creeping abomination? They couldn't be the same thing. He shook his head. 

But Michelle insisted, "I'm not lying! I saw them in a book! Get home, I'll show you, you'll see: larvae, pupae and butterflies. You'll see!"

"Come on!" Jack didn't want to look at worms, even in pictures. He just wanted to wash his hands and forget the disgusting feeling.

"Oh Ja-a-a-a-ck! Well, at least believe me that I'm not lying!"Michelle's eyes became wet and he surrendered.

"Okay, okay, I believe you."

"And a book? Will you? Promise?

"Later, I promise. But first... Who is faster?" Jack jumped up quickly and ran away trying to leave the unpleasant conversation behind. 

But Michelle's voice followed him, as she rushed to catch up with her brother, "And you should ask Dad, he knows everything about butterflies!"

Jack kept his promise and looked at the book. There were a number of butterflies. And there was a separate section about the armorial "Monarch", but all of them had one thing in common - they all started as caterpillars. Then a pupa, then a butterfly. The detailed descriptions left no doubt that his sister had been telling the truth. He put the book away. The biological details certainly reduced the insect's magical aura. But Father's butterfly remained special. It was a symbol, it was a messenger from Heaven above. All this…all of these caterpillars, cocoons, stubby leaves... Jack stopped drawing the butterflies. But he didn't stop believing.

When he was thirteen, and realized that he was different, he remembered the pupae. They hid, they surrounded themselves with cocoons and waited for their time to go free and fly. And he remembered the story of a species of butterfly, that obtained different colors depending on whether or not the pupae over wintered. That butterfly's children were a different color, black, not red. It was strange, but he felt the same way. He was of the same breed, but different. He started wondering if maybe he didn't have to paint his wings. Maybe he just had to hide in the cold, like those pupae in the book, then he would be the approved wing-color, and no one would question him. Most of the time. 

So he waited, waited, waited for his own spring to come, when it would be possible to get out, fly out. And he could not keep himself in the cold, his body craved warmth and his wings were darkening, betraying him with their different color, their bright white stripes. Sometimes he wondered why Michelle's wings weren't like his, perhaps her illness was the cold that made her look like the parents?

In the army, he once thought, he'd found freedom— that he was flying. But it turned out to belies, self-deception. A pupa's dream of flying. And he started to hate the butterflies. His father kept telling his tale, the winged banners of Gilboa waved in the wind, the gleaming badges on the parade uniforms - they were everywhere, all those damn butterflies. They would not let him forget that the time of the pupa must end.

And when he finally left, only then did he remember that once a butter fly was caught, the captor would prick it on a pin and lock it under glass forever. That's if it was lucky—if the butterfly was valuable, if it was needed for something. Even if it was just a summer butterfly and guilty only of being different…it was still a valuable specimen. The pin went through Jack's chest, and he couldn't pull away, couldn't move, couldn't run anywhere. Couldn't break through the dusty glass, separating him from the world. Not unless a miracle gave him strength greater than his fragile wings. 

Once, the butterflies had seemed so wonderful to Jack.


End file.
